Symposium lecturers

Graham Braithwaite, Cranfield University
Maintaining an authentic safety culture

Graham Braithwaite is Professor of Safety & Accident Investigation and Director of Transport Systems at Cranfield University. He holds a BSc (Hons) in Transport Management & Planning and a PhD in Aviation Safety Management from Loughborough University. He has worked extensively in aviation human factors, safety management and accident investigation and his most recent project was on Regulatory Safety Assurance for the UK CAA. 

He is the Independent Safety Advisory to the Board of British Airways and also sits as an Independent Non-Executive Member of the TUI (Northern Region) Safety Review Board.

José-Maria Lorenzo, the European Satellite Service Provider
EGNOS Service Provision

Mr. Jose Maria Lorenzo holds a M. Sc. Degree in Aeronautical Engineering from the Universidad Politécnica of Madrid.

Over the last years Jose-Maria has been working in a number of projects, most of them Air Navigation related. First he worked in the requirement definition and testing of Aena’s ATC System (SACTA), and then as an auditor for the Spanish CAA. After some years of analyzing and deploying working procedures for Aena based on Single European Sky Regulation and a short period as Certification Engineer for the Airspace Technology National Institute (INTA), he joined ESSP-SAS Service Development team in April 2014 as Aviation Development Expert, managing aspects related to the EGNOS Working Agreements with ANSPs implementing EGNOS based procedures and coordinating Aviation activities related to EGNOS service provision.

Kristín Sigurðardóttir, læknir hjá Þróunarmiðstöð rannsóknaverkefna
Stress - Friend or Foe?
& Resilience - So what can we do?

Kristín is an emergency physician, completing her studies in London and Newcastle, England. She works for the Recruitment Center, doing clinical work with participants in research projects for Decode Genetics, as well as teaching at the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Iceland. Kristín will hold two separate lectures during the Symposium.

She has long been interested in out-patient services, prevention and health advocacy, and she has held courses and lectures ever since med school, both within the National University Hospital of Iceland, as manager of education for the Emergency Ward, and outside.

Kristín does a lot of health consultancy and education for companies and has held courses where she speaks about e.g. stress and its effects, both positive and negative, and maintains that there are many things that people can do themselves to better meet challenges and endure under strain. Alongside a more traditional career in medicine, Kristín has worked as an emergency physician for the capital area’s Emergency Car, was a part of the Coast Guard’s helicopter squad, and was a member of the Committee for Large accidents (Directorate of Health and what is now called the Icelandic Transport Authoroity), staging rehearsals for responding to group accidents across the country.

Kristín is a great traveler and has lived and worked across the globe. She lived in Spain for 7 years, where she also worked as a consultant for fishing companies working on the coast of West-Africa, giving her the opportunity to learn about and work with local health care services.

Marika Melin, flugsálfræðingur við Karolinska Institutet
High-flying risks

Since earning her doctoral degree from Stockholm university in 2005, Marika Melin has been working as a researcher within the field of work- and organizational psychology: first at the Department of Psychology at Stockholm University, and since 2014 (and currently) at Karolinska Institutet, Department of Clinical Neuroscience. The main focus of her research is how changes in the labor market and new market-adjusted business models affect working conditions and ultimately employees health and behavior (for example safety). In 2015 she received research funds to conduct the present research study about working conditions, health and safety among airline pilots. 

Aviation psychology 
Parallel to her academic work, Melin has been working as an aviation psychologist since the beginning of 2000. In 2006 she took over Scandinavian Institute of Aviation Psychology (SIAP Ltd) as CEO. Associated to SIAP, Melin is a part of a group of 10 Swedish psychologists with expertise within the field of aviation, who do a wide range of assignments for different airlines, from recruitment and psychological assessments to education and organizational interventions. They work for example with THAI Airways, TUIFly, FlygBRA and several flying training schools in Scandinavia (Lund University School of Aviation, OSM Flight Academy). 

Ragnar Guðmundsson, stjórnandi rannsókna hjá rannsóknarnefnd samgönguslysa
The road from incident to an AD

Ragnar Gudmundsson has a BSc degree in Aerospace Engineering from Embry‐Riddle Aeronautical University in the United States and a MSc degree in Structural Engineering & Mechanics, jointly awarded by the University of Edinburgh and the University of Glasgow in the United Kingdom. 

His master‘s thesis was on the manipulation of the glass transition temperature of fiber reinforced polymers (carbon/epoxy composites) repairs. These materials are becoming widely used in the primary structure of modern airplanes, such as the Boeing 787 and Airbus 350 airplanes. 

Ragnar is a former Sr. Airframe Engineer at Icelandair, Technical Purchasing Manager at ITS Technical Services and Chief of Office of Airworthiness at Icelandair. Ragnar was appointed by the Icelandic Minister of Transportation onto the Icelandic Air Accident Investigation Board (IAAIB) in 2004. Ragnar was a board member at the IAAIB for eight years. 

In 2012 Ragnar became the deputy Chief Investigator of accidents at the Icelandic Air Accident Investigation Board and in 2013 he became an aviation Investigator‐In‐Charge (IIC) on the Icelandic Transportation Safety Board (ITSB). 

Ragnar holds a private pilot license. He lives in Reykjanes, near Keflavik Airport, with his wife and four children. 

Steinarr Bragason, Airline Electronics Engineering Committee
Datalink objectives and obstacles - the safety perspective

Steinarr is a captain and Nav Com expert at Icelandair, and a Co-Chairman of AEEC Datalink Users Forum. He has been interested in aviation security for a long time, and was chairman of FÍA’s Security Committee from 2001-2003.
He was the development partner with Spectralux Avionics for dual stack FANS 1/A+ ATN B1 solution (United States Patent – Named Inventor). He has participated in various datalink projects of ICAO and IATA. Steinarr will be discussing the purpose of datalink, and hurdles from the point of view of aviation security.